Yanny or Laurel: 4-second audio clip divides the internet

This time, people are divided in their opinion on whether they hear Yanny or Laurel and seems like the concern is real. We’ve done that below using an eight-band equalizer, essentially a more precise version of the Bass and Treble knobs on your vehicle stereo. People are hearing two different words, either “Yanny” and “Laurel”.

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YouTube channel Nerd It Up dissected the recording as well, concluding that which word you hear depends on the pitch of the recording. And by adjusting it down, “Laurel” people end up hearing “Yanny”.

That aside, Story ran an acoustic analysis on the viral recording of the computerized voice. “With a high-quality recording, and if all listeners were listening with the same device, there may not be any confusion”. Plus, older adults start losing the ability to hear sounds at higher frequency ranges. But that didn’t work for me, both through my speakers and my headphones. Turn the volume up and increase the bass, and you’ll hear Laurel.

Sorry. We couldn’t help ourselves. Yanny is but a distant dream once you enter the elysian fields of Laurel.

Explaining the audio-illusion, professor David Alais from the University of Sydney’s school of psychology said the Yanny/Laurel sound is an example of a “perceptually ambiguous stimulus” such as the Necker cube or the face/vase illusion. Now, the internet is fascinated with how people hear differently. “Yanny” is at a higher frequency, while “Laurel” is lower. Let us know in comments below what you hear.

“Because it’s noisy, your brain is filling in with what it thinks it should be”.

Some people say that they originally heard “Yanny” but once they heard “Laurel”, they couldn’t go back.

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Culture reporter Anna Menta, perhaps conspiring with Marcin, responded: “omg I’m laughing so much he just very frankly says “laurel”.